regarde-moi toujours comme ca

I came at it oddly, in that Ethan of Athos was my very first Bujold book ever, and I had no idea there was a larger Vorkosigan universe (or that it rocked so much) until a couple years later. I'd picked it up cheap on the used rack without any prior knowledge, and was worried it was going to be something like "sheltered man who thinks he's gay but only cos he's been isolated is swept away by the power of a woman's wiles" or some crap like that, so the feminism and everything really hit me in being nothing I'd expected from a space opera up til then. Which meant it made a pretty big impact on me, and stuck in my head for a long time. I can see, though, how if you read it young you might have missed a lot of the politics. There are whole swathes of the sci-fi I pulled off my parents' shelves as a kid and teen that I've needed to reread as an adult to really understand them. One of the things I really love about Athos is that it's a planet basically founded by crazy fundy fucktards, and it ends up becoming The Planet of the Gays. How sweet a revenge is that?! It's also more well critiqued within the book than some other same-sex utopias I've read.

I'm bi as well, with the same difficulty in really grokking how someone can truly *only* be into one gender, but I didn't like the magical bisexuality either. I think Terrence probably is less hetero than he may have assumed about himself, but that it wasn't going to be something he came to terms with automatically. I guess I didn't want him to be "prison gay" for lack of a better stereotype; when he does love Ethan, I need it to be real for him. It was super lovely to get a review from someone who sees the characters the way I do and to hear that it really worked for you.